Burnsville, Minnesota - 29 December, 2000 -

Andy and Doug Hoiland are do-it-yourselfers from the start. When they were in their early 20s, the brothers built a house together. When their parents got a shoddy maintenance job on their driveway, the duo set out to make that right. The firm that left cracks in the pavement and sticky asphalt sealant all over the lawn inspired the brothers to sell the house and use the equity in 1987 to start Jet-Black Inc. “It was just obvious it could be done better,” Doug Hoiland said. That two-person operation now has grown to 70 franchise locations in 20 states and, if the Hoilands are right, the Burnsville-based operation will expand possibly more than doubling in locations by the end of 2001. The brothers used to get up at 5:30 a.m. to mix tanks of sealer and do the grunt work themselves. They still get down and dirty at times, but they’re now dedicating most of their time to marketing, training and seeking new franchisees. A one-of-a-kind seal-coating formula created by the firm and trailers designed with all the equipment franchisees will need to do their individual jobs have considerably simplified the system, they said. “ We made all the mistakes so they don’t have to,” Doug Hoiland says. “And we hire people smarter than us.” While the duo is seeking franchisees from anywhere, the development of a new concrete sealing system (similar to the asphalt procedure on which Jet-Black was founded) is an effort to push expansion into the Southern United States, where warmer climates will allow us more year-round business, the Hoilands said. In Texas about 90 percent of parking lots are concrete, said Doug Hoiland. The firm projects its 2000 revenue to be $2 million, derived almost exclusively from an 8 percent royalty it collects on franchisees gross sales. It’s a price worth paying, said Mike Moran, a friend of the Hoiland brothers since junior high school and a franchisee for Maplewood and North St. Paul since 1997. Though Moran said he had no experience in the blacktopping industry before getting involved with Jet-Black, the Hoilands provided enough training and support that his business starting booming right away. “They’re always available when I need them. I do think people will start to become much more familiar with them in the future.” Franchising became an attractive option as the firm started growing. Andy Hoiland said. The brothers thought giving operators an ownership stake in the business would force them to care about the quality of the work they did, and it also freed the Hoilands to primarily focus on growth, he said. Since selling its first franchise in 1993, the company has been ranked among the world’s best 500 franchises for strength and growth by Entrepreneur and was ranked No.1 in asphalt maintenance services by the same magazine in 1996, 1998, 1999 and 2000. Moran said his firm, which runs about six months out of the year and consists of himself and between two and four employees, averages about five jobs and $1,300 to $1,400 in revenue a day.

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